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What is shifting cultivation

Answer 1

Shifting cultivation is an agricultural system in which plots of land are cultivated temporarily, then abandoned and allowed to revert to their natural vegetation while the cultivator moves on to another plot. The period of cultivation is usually terminated when the soil shows signs of exhaustion or, more commonly, when the field is overrun by weeds. The length of time that a field is cultivated is usually shorter than the period over which the land is allowed to regenerate by lying fallow. This technique is often used in LEDCs (Less Economically Developed Countries) or LICs (Low Income Countries). In some areas, cultivators use a practice of slash-and-burn as one element of their farming cycle. Others employ land clearing without any burning, and some cultivators are purely migratory and do not use any cyclical method on a given plot. Sometimes no slashing at all is needed where regrowth is purely of grasses, an outcome not uncommon when soils are near exhaustion and need to lie fallow. In shifting agriculture, after two or three years of producing vegetable and grain crops on cleared land, the migrants abandon it for another plot. Land is often cleared by slash-and-burn methods—trees, bushes and forests are cleared by slashing, and the remaining vegetation is burnt. The ashes add potash to the soil. Then the seeds are sown after the rains.

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Aruna kumari answered 3 year(s) ago

What is shifting cultivation?

 What is shifting cultivation?
Why did the European foresters discourage the practice of shifting cultivation?

Class-IX History

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Asked by Adithyan

Mar 22

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Aruna kumari , SubjectMatterExpert

Member since May 13 2014

Shifting agriculture is a traditional agriculture practice in many parts of Asia, Africa and South America.

In shifting cultivation parts of the forest are cut and burnt in rotation.

Seeds are sown in the ashes after the first monsoon rains, and the crops is harvested by October – November.

Such plots are cultivated for a couple of years and then left fallow for 12 to 18 years for the forest to grow back...........

mark as brainliest ...... hope it helps